The removal was supported by a coalition of NGOs. “Lenin did not offer anything except violence and dictatorship,” its leader, Edil Baisalov, said. He claimed that there were about four thousand Lenin statues in towns and villages in Kyrgyzstan. “Isn’t that rather too many for a person who never even visited Kyrgyzstan, and didn’t say a word about our country anywhere in his works? For Kyrgyzstan to still have so many monuments to Lenin is like Germany preserving statues of Hitler. If we really want to build a democracy and a new civil society, we must tear such things down.” Other commentators were more cynical. “If the authorities don’t like Lenin anymore, why don’t they just remove the statue’s head?” asked one parliamentary deputy. “That way, each new leader could simply screw a model of his head onto Lenin’s body. Just think of the money that could be saved.”3 The government ended up spending more money. In 2011, reportedly because some Kyrgyz believed that a woman holding a tunduk was a bad omen, Erkindik was supplanted by Manas, the national folk hero.
Although some Kyrgyz nationalists in Osh would support the removal of the Lenin statue, the city has escaped a public spat on the issue, probably because it faces more pressing challenges—a stagnant economy, declining social services, a high crime rate, and periodic bloody conflicts between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks, the most recent in 2010 when more than 470 people were killed and 2,800 properties damaged. However, the statue’s reprieve does not denote nostalgia for Soviet rule; it’s simply (and Lenin would understand this) a matter of economics. The city does not have the money to tear down or move the statue, let alone put up something more politically correct in its place. Today, it’s a local landmark, a place where visitors pose for snapshots, kids ride skateboards, and lovers scrawl their names. If Lenin stays, it will be for that best capitalist reason—because he’s good for business.
Lenin statues come in many varieties. There’s Lenin with his head raised, looking to the skies or stars, Lenin the action figure rallying the masses, Lenin deep in thought, Lenin looking resolute. There’s even a Lenin looking rather uneasy outside a taco joint in Seattle. Kyrgyzstan’s two most prominent Lenins do look different. Bishkek Lenin, with his right arm outstretched towards the mountains, is the dynamic leader, pointing towards some mystic, communist, egalitarian future. Osh Lenin holds out his arms as if to greet people. He seems kinder, gentler, more human. Considering Osh’s troubled history, maybe the Lenin statue is a symbol worth keeping.
Mountain Barriers
From the so-called Pamir Knot in Tajikistan, the great mountain ranges of Asia extend in all directions—the Himalayas and the Karakoram to the southeast, the Hindu Kush to the southwest, the Kunlun to the east, and the Tian Shan to the northeast. In Kyrgyzstan, the Central Tian Shan range forms a natural border with China’s Xinjiang Province, rising to Pik Pobedy (Victory), at 24,111 feet the second-highest point in the former Soviet Union. South of Bishkek, the Kyrgyz Ala Too range runs east-west to the deep mountain lake of Issyk Kul; the Kungey Ala Too range north of the lake forms the border with Kazakhstan; the Fergana range straddles the middle of the country; the Pamir Alay range dominates the south. More than 90 percent of Kyrgyzstan’s land area—the size of Austria and Hungary combined, or the US state of Montana—consists of mountains, with 40 percent higher than 3,000 feet.
The mountains are both a blessing and a curse. Their natural beauty offers potential for tourism, but “Switzerland of Asia” campaigns have so far failed to contribute significantly to the economy, mainly because of the remoteness of the country and poor roads and tourist facilities. It’s great trekking terrain, but the so-called resorts—most of them former summer camps for Soviet industrial workers—are short on both modern facilities and après-ski ambience. There are mineral deposits, many of them unexploited because of the cost and difficulty of mining in remote regions. Hydroelectric plants have the potential to provide all the country’s electricity supply, with some left over for export. However, as the glaciers continue to recede, scientists worry about the sustainability of the country’s water resources. For centuries, the mountains have provided summer pastures for herds of sheep, goats, and horses, but most of the land cannot be cultivated.
Few roads cross the mountains, and they are often blocked by avalanches and mudslides; cash-strapped local authorities struggle to maintain or improve them. Building new roads to improve commerce and boost the economy in rural areas means moving massive quantities of earth and rock and constructing bridges and tunnels—a major investment that usually requires help from foreign donors. It is difficult and expensive to transport goods, deliver the mail, or provide medical services; in winter, a trip to the town market or the hospital may be impossible. At higher elevations, the first snows come in October; some settlements are cut off from November to May.
The mountains are as much a cultural and political as a physical barrier. The major concentrations of population are in two large valleys—the Chuy in the north, with the capital Bishkek, and the Fergana in the south, with Osh and Djalalabad, the second and third largest cities. About half the country’s population of 5.3 million live in the south. The Ala Too and Fergana ranges separate the valleys, splitting the country and its major urban centers into two distinct regions. In Kyrgyz society, where identity and loyalty are still defined by family, clan, and village, the government in Bishkek can seem very distant. The north is more industrialized and secular, oriented to Kyrgyzstan’s larger and more prosperous Central Asian neighbor, Kazakhstan, and to Russia and the West. The south is more agricultural, conservative, and Islamic, looking to Uzbekistan and further west to Iran. Some northerners fear separatism, Islamic fundamentalism, and the influence of Uzbekistan in the south; some southerners believe the government in Bishkek exploits their region, while shortchanging it on tax revenue and social services. Polls show that most people in Kyrgyzstan consider the differences between the north and south to be the major challenge to national unity.
MAP 2.1 Kyrgyzstan and the Fergana Valley (map by Brian Edward Balsley, GISP)
Landing in Osh
It’s a one-hour flight from Bishkek to Osh over a rugged landscape of rocky, treeless mountain slopes, with fast-running rivers, patches of green pasture, and the occasional settlement. Even in summer, there’s snow on the mountain peaks. On my first flight in early December 1995, snow covered most of the valleys. From the window of the Soviet-era, twin-prop Yak-40, I felt as if I could almost step out onto a summit. The pilot flew low to avoid the cloud cover, trusting his view from the cockpit more than his navigation instruments. Flying into the wind, the plane shook and rattled but held its course. My traveling companion, Kuban Tabaldiev, assured me we would be safe. He said he had taken this flight many times. The plane might be old, but the pilots were well trained. They had experience flying in bad weather across all kinds of terrain, taking off and landing at small airports throughout Central Asia and Siberia.
Kuban was the media specialist for the United States Information Service (USIS), the agency which in the 1990s administered US-funded educational and cultural programs. In 1995, USIS partnered with the UNESCO regional office to provide training and resources for journalists in Kyrgyzstan. A media center was planned at the National Library in Bishkek. My assignment was to establish a center in Osh for Kyrgyz, Uzbek, and Russian-language journalists in the south.
USIS and UNESCO staff assured me that they had successfully negotiated space for the center at the oblast (provincial) library. My job was to meet with local journalists and media owners to assess training needs, hire a manager, compile a list of equipment, and write a report. The tasks were enumerated in the usual bureaucratic language. On the ground in Osh, it didn’t work out quite as smoothly.
Kuban and I checked into the Hotel Intourist (post-independence, it was renamed the Hotel Osh, but no one seemed to use the new name) for three nights until I found an apartment for the three weeks I was to spend in the city. Like all Soviet-era hotels, the Intourist was centrally located, but that was about its only competitive advantage. When we arrived, the lobby was dark, and the elevators weren’t working; the clerk